Loyalty
by Varmint
Summary: Ibiki sees the person he could have been if he had lost all hope when he was interrogated and tortured by Kirigakure. He worries and despairs... Luckily for him, though, his soulmate is there to remind him of his reality. Soulmate AU! Ibiki/Ino! Gift for Smartasswolf23. One-shot!


I was given this prompt by my good friend Smartasswolf23: '"So what I should be scared of you?" ... "No, you should be terrified of her." Ibiki said, as he motioned to the petite blonde beside him.'

So I wrote this up because I wanted to give her something awesome to read!

..~..~..

The interrogation had just begun. A traitor to all, the woman before him had burned many ninja before Konoha's ANBU Black Ops had managed to stop her. Kumo, Iwa, Suna, and Kiri would all kill to get their hands on her to be able to get some semblance of vengeance for all those shinobi she had managed to destroy with her superb control of mental jutsu.

Nullifiers and chakra restricting devices were all being used on her. Even though she had said she didn't really care much for trying to escape ( _At the moment_ , she had stressed), Ibiki didn't want to take any chances. Especially with Ino having insisted to be part of the interrogation.

Apparently, she had befriended a nin from Suna a long time ago. A young girl named Matsuri, or something. A victim to the woman before them. And when Ino wanted something, it was rather impossible to make her think twice about it.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you. I don't know any secrets. I was never trusted by any village to an extent that would allow me to get my claws onto anything of importance." The woman's lips shined as they were pulled into a long smile, dark skin seeming even darker under the translucent lights used for the interrogation room. "Although I could tell you how much the Raikage enjoys-"

"That is _not_ what we're looking for." Ibiki interrupted with a shake of his head, moving forward and toward the woman with his arms crossed over his chest, the file of her past exploits gripped in his right hand.

She was originally from Kumogakure. Became a genin at the age of twelve and then a chunin at twenty. Throughout her shinobi career, she had been average. There had never been anything that had made her stand apart from the rest of her generation. Until a mission in which she was kidnapped by Kirigakure years ago. She had never gone back to her home village. But she had wreaked havoc everywhere she had gone, even though there was no explanation as to _why_.

"No, you're looking for an explanation as to why I have a bounty in every single hidden village, along with a few civilian lands."

The shackles on her wrists jingled when she moved her hands to clasp each other, then placed them on top of the metallic table before her. Her hair was unlike something Ibiki had seen in his life before. The left side was long and pristinely straightened, the white contrasting starkly against the darkness of her skin. But the right side was shaved down to the skull, only thin and short, rather than long and voluminous.

It certainly wasn't a normal hairstyle around these lands.

"But I don't really feel like telling you much. I don't have a good relationship with interrogators, you see. And I would much rather not be in here, with you people."

If there was one thing that brought Ibiki comfort about this woman, it was the fact that she seemed to enjoy talking. Even with the nonsense she had spewed when being hauled in by the team of ANBU, and with the unimportant things she was saying now, she enjoyed to talk. And he knew that those that loved to talk the most were the ones to get easier answers out of.

Behind him, he could feel Ino stewing in her anger.

The Yamanaka had grown quite a lot in the past few years after the Fourth Shinobi War. She wasn't the same boy crazed girl he could remember having seen during her first Chunin Exams. The loss of her father had hit the whole village hard, but Ino had received the brunt of the blow.

She had been the apple of her father's eyes her whole life. And, suddenly, all she had was her mother and a clan to take care of. Ino had been able to grow and learn from her life, though. And was now one of the strongest and most able-bodied kunoichi Ibiki had been lucky enough to meet.

Been lucky enough to be bound to.

"Attakai-"

"Don't call me that!"

Ibiki quirked an eyebrow at the sudden fit of anger, but decided to not comment on it. Instead he nodded and asked, "What would you like for me to call you?"

"Call me Tōketsu."

Interesting change of name. From what means warm to what meant frozen. Undoubtedly, a way for her to try and distance herself from the person she once was.

With a nod, Ibiki sat down in front of the woman and opened the file in his hands. It was a rather heavy file, filled with papers of reports of the kunoichi before him and all of the atrocities she had committed throughout her life after she disappeared from her home.

"Alright, _Tōketsu_ ," He made sure to look up at her when he said her name, earning a glimmer of amusement from her before he looked back down at her papers. "You understand why it is that you're here? Being interrogated by Konohagakure shinobi."

When she nodded, the woman's white hair bounced up and down. And then she smiled brightly, flashing Ibiki with a radiant and seemingly innocent smile that didn't have a right to come from someone as dangerous the woman before him.

"Because I've killed a lot of your comrades." She smirked at the blonde woman behind him, winking in her direction. "You would know, blondie."

There was no doubt in Ibiki's mind that if this interrogation had happened when Ino was younger, the Yamanaka would have immediately begun to dish out pain to the woman before them. But she was much more mature than many would have thought she would have been able to be and stayed put, merely standing at the back of the room with her arms crossed over her own chest.

"Maen Nara; one of the men you cut down." Ibiki pulled out the picture of the Nara that had once worked under him to slide towards the woman, who grabbed it and looked over it with a curious glint in her eye. "He had a family. A wife and two kids. His oldest had just graduated the Academy when he had the bad luck of running into you."

There was a flash of sympathy when she heard this. But that was soon gone and replaced with a dismissive shrug. "Sucks to be that kid. I wouldn't want to be a genin now for shit. Not enough violent missions."

Ibiki looked at her with an emotionless face, but did not know what to think. The woman was clearly trying to act tougher than she truly was. But for who? Why would she be acting so difficult? She had no allies to protect. No one to go home to. No one to expect to love her back.

With this thought, he wondered if she had a soulmate's mark somewhere on her body. Even though she showed a lot more skin than most women chose to do, she still had her whole left leg hidden by her long skirt, along with her shoulder blades and chest by bandages. There was armor that covered up her chest as well, along with her shoulders, and knees. But aside from that, the rest of her body was exposed in a way that left little to the imagination.

Allowing for a few seconds to tick by while the woman smoothed her thumb over the picture of their deceased comrade, Ibiki decided to show her another.

"Akahiko Yamanaka." He had not known Akahiko. But Ino had. He was a member of her clan, after all. "Had a disabled mother he had to take care of. Now she is alone."

A lie. The Yamanaka clan had immediately helped the woman, along with the two children she had left. But Tōketsu did not need to know the truth. Maybe there was still compassion left inside of her, hidden extremely well.

Once more the woman's only visible green eye softened. But that soon hardened and she glared at Ibiki, shoving both pictures towards him. "Why are you showing me all of this? They're all dead! You can't do anything about it."

"That is very true." The man relented, nodding softly to pick the cards back up. "But I can bring their loved ones some justice. And to do that, Konoha wishes to get all information we can out of you."

"You're not a normal interrogator." Tōketsu suddenly murmured, moving her hands up and her head down to be able to scratch at the scar on her right cheek that disappeared into the eyepatch she wore. "You're actually pretty nice. What the hell's wrong with you?"

Finally, he was getting somewhere.

"You have been interrogated before?"

With a scoff, the woman threw herself back into her chair, even though it caused her arms to be pulled back into the table. "What, haven't you read the reports? I was kidnapped by Kiri _years ago_! Back by the... What Shinobi War was it?" She murmured to herself, then shrugged. "The one that came when I still gave a shit. Before the whole 'Black and Red Cloaks' business.

"The Akatsuki?"

"Yeah. Those jackasses." She grinned wolfishly at them both, then cocked her head to the side slightly. "Know that I was approached by them to join up at one point? I said 'No way, bastards! Tōketsu's a one-woman show!"

This didn't really surprise Ibiki to hear. The woman was more than capable enough to be recruited for the group that had once been composed of only the strongest of shinobi. What he couldn't wrap his head around, though, was the fact that this woman was his age. And had been taken to be interrogated by the same people. At the _same time as him._

His time spent under the violent oppression that came from shinobi seeking to learn about Konoha's secret was one he barely ever thought about. It had taken him a long while to heal and even longer time to become accustomed to regular life.

"But, yeah." The woman sniffed with a shrug, "I was interrogated by Kiri years ago. Where do you think this scar came from?" She pointed at her right eye, then to her neck, which had a rather gnarly looking burn mark all over its left side. "And this one? Dude, my body's a canvas of scars because of those bastards."

A canvas of scars... He knew what that felt and looked like... His whole body was one.

"Which is why I say you're not the usual kind of interrogator. They went right into the bone breaking and morale snapping..." She sighed wistfully as her eye fell on Ibiki once more, then leaned forward to look at him in a much closer manner. "You're different... Why is that?"

The scarred man didn't react when she got too close. He merely stayed in place and smirked down at her. "Who's to say?" He managed to shrug out, even over the lump that had formed in his throat.

This woman... The more she talked, the more Ibiki could see himself in her. And the more it terrified him.

Captured and interrogated by Kiri. Left a mess of scars with only fragments of sanity. Where else had he heard this before?

The woman's green eye narrowed before she humphed and shrugged, leaning back onto her chair once more. "I got off easy, though. These things you see on my body; they ain't nothing compared to what I heard happen to this one other kid... He was an idiot, you know. Never talked for some reason. Which is stupid, if you ask me. Only reason I don't got screws in my head is because I finally gave up the secrets Kiri wanted to hear." Her fingers began to pick at her nails as she spoke, and Ibiki immediately knew it was a nervous tick of hers. "Nobody came for me. Nobody cared. Nobody waited for me. And I was an orphan, so I had no one to go back to... Then I was so angry that I-I just didn't care who I hurt." Her hands tightened around each other, eyebrows drawing in with anger. "I wanted to make others hurt like I had."

It was like hearing what could have happened to him if he hadn't stayed strong.

He had felt the same way after he had been rescued. He had wanted to make others hurt the same way he had been hurt. So he had forced his body to heal and had become an interrogator. All so he could get back at those that had hurt him by breaking those that had tried to hurt his village.

"But, enough about me."

Her smile was dazzling once more, but was missing its dangerous edge. Opening up about what had happened to her had not been part of her plan. That was easy to tell. And it meant that getting any other information out of her would be even easier than he had initially thought.

"Why don't you tell me about yourself, handsome? Have anyone to gawk at those muscles?"

The large man schooled his features to show no emotions and tried his best to keep any emotions to seep into his words. "We still need to find out any vital information you may have about Konoha and any other villages."

"Well I ain't speaking."

"That isn't advisable. I've been an interrogator for years now." Ibiki picked up the photos he had placed on the table to returned them to the file, then closed it once more. "And you hurt someone rather important to my partner."

"So what," The woman scoffed, smirk becoming predatory once more. "I should be scared of you?"

It was at times like these that Ibiki was grateful for Ino being around. After seeing _himself_ in that dishonest and pain filled eye, he didn't think he would be able to continue with the interrogation. But he knew for a fact that Ino would be more than able to step in.

"No, you should be terrified of her." Ibiki said as he motioned to the petite blonde behind him. "I just conducted the initial interrogation. She will be taking over for the rest."

"But, Handsome! We formed a real connection!"

"Goodbye, Tōketsu." He stood up and turned to Ino, nodding simply at her before he walked out of the interrogation room.

As he walked, his knees felt like they would collapse at any moment. But he forced himself to continue, to go back to his office to begin on the paperwork on this interrogation before Ino finished up with the woman. And once he was done with it and Ino had not come back, he decided to go back to their home and begin making dinner.

If the interrogation was taking this long, it was probable his lover would come back with an appetite.

* * *

"You're not sleeping."

Ibiki sighed when Ino rolled over him, blonde hair spilling onto his chest as her pupil-less eyes looked down at him, even through the darkness that had fallen over their bedroom.

"It's just a bad dream, Ino. You don't have to worry yourself about anything. Go back to sleep."

Even though his words were strong and slightly commanding, Ibiki was more than aware of the fact that the woman on top of him would not back down until he was feeling better. She was as stubborn as her mother and as observant as her father. Quite the combination of two of the most incredible people he had ever had the fortune of meeting in his life.

For a few seconds, neither said a single thing. Ino just looked into Ibiki's dark eyes without a single emotion flashing across her face. And he looked back at her with a halfhearted smile, hoping she would, for once in her life, just allow a problem to lie.

"She had a soulmate. But she's dead. Died in the war right in front of her eyes."

The words that came out of Ino were not something Ibiki had been expecting. And they chilled him to his very bone, having no single doubt about who the blonde was talking about.

"The reason why she gave away all information was because she had no reasons to live. No family to go back to and no soulmate to spend the rest of her life with. In her eyes, there's no reason for her to live even now. Just to cause pain and destruction wherever it is she goes."

Ino pushed herself up from his chest and straddled his hips, then pulled him up by the arms so he was sitting up.

"Ibiki, what does your soul mark say?"

"Ino, I really-"

"It's just like mine, right?" She continued though, moving her hands so she was forcing Ibiki's arm to curl around her back and his hand to land in between her shoulder blades. "I mean, that's why we're together and have been ever since I happened to see your mark. Because we share the soul mark that shows us we are soul mates."

Ino tended to wear thin, silky, and form hugging garments to bed. She said it was because they helped keep her cool when pressed up against him, a human heater. But he liked to believe that she also did so to be closer to him, although not completely naked.

Even after years of healing and getting better, Ibiki was more than uncomfortable with nudity. His own and others. And even though Ino was his soulmate, he still couldn't look at her without feeling his throat seize up while flashes of what her body would look like after a torture session surfacing in his mind.

Luckily for him, she understood why it was that he couldn't look at her without tearing up. And she did not try and push him. She just... She helped him cope.

His calloused fingers ran over the exact spot he knew Ino's mark was, having memorized it within seconds of having seen it.

"Loyalty."

His voice was choked and he closed his eyes to not have to look the woman before him directly in the eyes. He did not like being weak. But how could he not be when he'd seen the person he could have become?

"Ino, I could have been-"

An abrupt kiss silenced him. Her lips were always soft and tasted of cherries, her favorite thing to eat no matter what the circumstances.

The taste of her helped Ibiki calm down and become grounded. It helped remind him that he wasn't, in fact, going to go through a psychotic break that would end with him murdering a good portion of those around him before he was ultimately killed by ANBU Black Ops.

"You're not." She whispered against his lips, moving her arms around his shoulder to hug him tightly. "You're loyal, Ibiki. You're the strongest person I know, along with the most caring and kind. And don't you dare forget that."

Her voice was soft and sympathetic and it rang in his ears in a comforting way that made his whole body warm and relax.

"Loyalty. Remember that, Ibiki. It was what kept you alive while you were tortured... What kept me alive during the war... What binds us together..." The blonde pulled back and smiled at Ibiki, "What keeps me from leaving you're overreactive ass."

Ibiki stared at Ino for a second listlessly. Then he wrapped his arms tightly around her and pressed his lips softly, yet passionately, against her own.

He loved his soulmate.

And she was right. He would never become what that woman was. He had her to keep him in line.

..~..~..

I hope you liked this, ya smartass! It took me a whole day, quite a lot of muttering to myself and seeming insane to family, and even questioning my little sister what was cooler, crazed psychopaths or serious psychopaths, but I have finished it!

And for anyone else that reads this, I hope you also like this! And please tell me what y'all think. Reviews are awesome and keeps starving college students happy.


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